Insurance Blogging – Easy To Start – Hard To Keep Going
My own experience with insurance blogging started in 2007. I attended a conference in Atlanta on social media when it really started rolling along in 2008. That is when I decided to start blogging very heavily and to have a weekly newsletter.
Let us get you a toolkit started to start your insurance blogging hobby or career. Once you have set up your framework, the blogging time becomes easier. I am not talking about Facebook or Twitter blogging. These next five sections discuss how to establish an insurance blogging website or on any subject of your choice.
I try to avoid free services in my recommendations. Even on the internet, you get what you pay for every time. BTW, I am not making a cent off the recommendations.
1. Establish a Website Name and URL
If you are going to do insurance blogging, then you would want to choose a website name. Think about what you want to cover. If you want to rank in Google and Bing, then the website address is crucial. Go to whois.com to see if the website name you want is taken. If not, then buy and register it ASAP. If you are serious about your endeavor, then buy the .com .org and .net versions of the name so that someone does not squat on your original URL.
I see an ad on the page that says WordPress website hosting for $4.28 a month for a year. That is cheaper than a latte at your local coffee establishment.
2. Build Your Insurance Blogging Website or Have Someone Build It For You
Many website builders are on the internet. Do not let this make you shy away from building your website. Since 2016, website builders have been made so much easier. PC Magazine – my go-to website for rankings has the website builders ranked – look for PC Editor’s Choice. Some of the builders have domain name registration. This combines the first and second steps into one.
One area to consider is what happens if you decide to move your insurance blogging site to a new host. Some website builders make that extremely difficult.
If you feel overwhelmed, you can contact the company that built our website and then updated it at least seven times. The company is Redwood Productions. They are on this website. https://redwoodproductions.com/
Almost any type of promotional material including websites can be purchased there. That is a more expensive option, but worth the money if you are serious about starting a website for blogging.
3. Read Many Info Sources Each Day or Request Their Weekly Edition
When you first begin insurance blogging, you will want to read many sources of information each day. I read approximately 10 per day. No, I do not read all the articles. Reading the headlines saves time. Most websites are OK with you writing about an existing article on their website.
Make sure that you provide a link to their article. Writing about other articles is a great way to start your insurance blogging. Google thinks of plagiarism as the worst offense. Getting Google rankings to forgive plagiarism takes months if not years.
You can find a list of the articles that I read every day/each week in this article.
4. Just Start Writing – The Hardest Part Is The Resistance
I have struggled with writer’s block. I think it is more of burnout than a block.
One of the better books on overcoming writer’s block can be found here – The War of Art. This is a short read on how to overcome starting that first article and when you cannot seem to muster the strength and attention to writing an article.
If you do not mind reading an old book, eBay has many copies on the secondary/used marketplace. I read it last week – totally worth it.
The first article was the hardest to write back in 2007. Today’s article was hard to write. After I finished the first one, and after I finish this article – they were not that hard to compose for the blog readers.
5. A Few Tools For Insurance Blogging That I Use
A few tools that I use for my blogging are:
- Yoast – free and Pro copies. Millions of bloggers use this tool. The Pro copy is worth it if you want to be a serious insurance blogger. Getting a green light is the key goal.
- Grammarly – free and Pro version. If you want other websites to re-publish your articles, they need to be grammatically perfect as possible.
- Microsoft Word’s Editor – I always copy the blog, drop it into Word, and run the editor. It is like a second opinion on Grammarly. This is not their spellchecker. Word 2016 has the editor included.
- Microsoft Word’s Dictate – another tool for dictating your articles if you are not the best typist.
The secret that I promised is that many articles are published by ghostwriters. If you can afford a ghostwriter, then you can pay to have articles written for you. Two or three of my contemporaries have hired ghostwriters in the past. There are no ghost-written articles in this blog – my worker’s comp insurance blogging is all original material.
Good luck if you start your own blog.
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4 Responses
I find I don’t put blogging high enough on my priority list, so instead of having a post a week, I end up with a post a month.
Your suggestions to read widely (and credit the source) and just start writing are right on the mark.
Thanks!
Gary,
Thanks for commenting. The book that I recommended in the article – The War of Art helped me with posting more often during the pandemic. The easiest way to get the blogging rolling along is by writing on someone else’s article. Be sure to link to the article you are referencing so that Google does not penalize you for copying the info.
Feel free to comment anytime.
I have that book on my shelf somewhere. Will have to pull it down and read it again. Thanks for the recommendation.
You are more than welcome. Good luck with the blogging.